Originally published on May 6, 2011.

A gang of thugs with stolen weapons knocks over a 7-Eleven, clearing the register of cash and grabbing a few Slim Jims on the way out.

A crew of lowlifes peddles coke and pain-killers to students on local high school and college campuses.

A multinational network of Islamic jihadists seeking the return of the caliphate terrorizes Western and Muslim nations with thousands of violent offensives, including the horrific attacks on 9/11.

One of these things is not like the others.

The Left views terrorists as the equivalent of ordinary criminals.  Basically, jihadists are dysfunctional naughty boys, no different than the neighborhood bad boys who spend their weekends sleeping it off in county lock-up.

Leftists hate when we use those nasty metaphors like “War on Terror” to characterize our hunt for radicals like bad boy Osama bin Laden.  After all, Islamic terrorists are nothing more than average criminals taken to the extreme.  Islamic terrorism is the product of psychologically deviant behavior and should be dealt with by law enforcement, in their warped estimation.

By using this screwed up outlook to explain away Islamic terror, 9/11 might as well be described as a flight miscalculation.

In the closed minds of leftists like Salon’s Michael Lind, America is the bad guy. The 9/11 attacks, the attacks since, and those so-called terrorists we’re trying to stop from destroying mankind are nothing more than international criminals, hardly different than drug dealers and prostitutes:

When the al-Qaida attacks on 9/11 were followed by a debate about whether the campaign to defeat Osama bin Laden and his network should be thought of as police work or war, I was surprised. The idea of a ‘war on terror’ seemed obviously inappropriate, even as a metaphor.  In its structure and modus operandi, al-Qaida and other terrorist networks were and are more like international criminal organizations—drug smuggling or prostitution cartels, for example—than like states.  The U.S. military might supplement law enforcement efforts, if countries protected bin Laden, as the Taliban regime did in Afghanistan before it was deposed and as it now appears elements of the Pakistani government must have done for many years.  But apart from raids like the one in which bin Laden was killed, the chief responsibility for identifying jihadist networks and disrupting planned acts of terrorism would lie with intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials…In a remarkably short period of time, the right managed to persuade the American people to think of jihadist terrorism as war, not crime.  Al-Qaida’s transnational network of militants, and the imitators it inspired, was treated as though they were the equivalents of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.  Instead of being treated as the equivalent of the terrorist Carlos the Jackal, bin Laden was promoted to the status of Hitler or Stalin.

Lind’s commentary is so typical of the Left. 

A gang of thugs with stolen weapons knocks over a 7-Eleven, clearing the register of cash and grabbing a few Slim Jims on the way out.

A crew of lowlifes peddles coke and pain-killers to students on local high school and college campuses.

A multinational network of Islamic jihadists seeking the return of the caliphate terrorizes Western and Muslim nations with thousands of violent offensives, including the horrific attacks on 9/11.

One of these things is not like the others.

The Left views terrorists as the equivalent of ordinary criminals.  Basically, jihadists are dysfunctional naughty boys, no different than the neighborhood bad boys who spend their weekends sleeping it off in county lock-up.

Leftists hate when we use those nasty metaphors like “War on Terror” to characterize our hunt for radicals like bad boy Osama bin Laden.  After all, Islamic terrorists are nothing more than average criminals taken to the extreme.  Islamic terrorism is the product of psychologically deviant behavior and should be dealt with by law enforcement, in their warped estimation.

By using this screwed up outlook to explain away Islamic terror, 9/11 might as well be described as a flight miscalculation.

In the closed minds of leftists like Salon’s Michael Lind, America is the bad guy. The 9/11 attacks, the attacks since, and those so-called terrorists we’re trying to stop from destroying mankind are nothing more than international criminals, hardly different than drug dealers and prostitutes:

When the al-Qaida attacks on 9/11 were followed by a debate about whether the campaign to defeat Osama bin Laden and his network should be thought of as police work or war, I was surprised. The idea of a ‘war on terror’ seemed obviously inappropriate, even as a metaphor.  In its structure and modus operandi, al-Qaida and other terrorist networks were and are more like international criminal organizations—drug smuggling or prostitution cartels, for example—than like states.  The U.S. military might supplement law enforcement efforts, if countries protected bin Laden, as the Taliban regime did in Afghanistan before it was deposed and as it now appears elements of the Pakistani government must have done for many years.  But apart from raids like the one in which bin Laden was killed, the chief responsibility for identifying jihadist networks and disrupting planned acts of terrorism would lie with intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials…In a remarkably short period of time, the right managed to persuade the American people to think of jihadist terrorism as war, not crime.  Al-Qaida’s transnational network of militants, and the imitators it inspired, was treated as though they were the equivalents of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.  Instead of being treated as the equivalent of the terrorist Carlos the Jackal, bin Laden was promoted to the status of Hitler or Stalin.

Lind’s commentary is so typical of the Left. 

Republican representative Peter King, the Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, has been accused of being a racist and an Islamophobe and characterized as paranoid, hysterical, anti-American, anti-civil rights, and as a McCarthy-like witch hunter and as a provocateur.

In actuality, representative King is a Johnny-Come-Lately to the question of radical Islam and national security. From 2006 to 2009, Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman, in his capacity as Chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Relations, and then Democratic representative, Jane Harman, in her capacity as the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, held 20 such hearings in Washington, D.C.

Both Lieberman and Harman were also accused of being racists and of conducting an anti-Muslim witch hunt. Left-wing and liberal media pundits, allegedly pro-peace feminist groups (like Code Pink) said so–as did the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in terms of supporting a known Muslim terrorist group.

Whether one is a Republican or a Democrat, a Senator or a Representative, a male or a female political leader, the accusations remain the same. Harman was accused of “representing Israel not California;” Lieberman was accused of being biased, a bigot, a Zealot; neither his views nor his hearings could protect America’s national security. On the contrary, according to their very vocal critics, both Lieberman and Harman had endangered American interests, both here and abroad, by looking at violent Islamist ideology and its pursuit of a global, Sharia-ruled Caliphate.

According to notorious mosqueteer Imam Rauf: “The fear I have is the banner headline in the Muslim world … that Muslims are under attack [is something] which radicalizes people even further.”

The overly emotional and self-righteously very angry Muslim-American Representative Keith Ellison stated: “We need to conduct a thorough, fair analysis and to do no harm. The approach of today’s hearing, I fear, does not meet these standards,” as he sobbed over a presumed incident of bias against a Muslim saint who had been treated as a sinner. He claimed that a 9/11 rescuer who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center was initially considered a suspect in the attacks. The problem is that Ellison’s facts were all wrong, that there had been no bias, no defamation.

However, this ability to become so emotional in public, on cue, based on a big lie, characterizes jihadic psychology. Representative Ellison is not just your regular, ordinary Muslim-American. Rather, he has a long history of being associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nation of Islam. In addition, there are major, murky, and mysterious gaps in Ellison’s resume.

Ellison displays an ability not only to lie in public but to believe his own lie. Other jihadists emotionally exaggerate the extent to which they are hated or have experienced “Islamophobia.” This seems to be as out of touch with reality as is Ellison’s belief in a lie. For example, according to the FBI, of the 1,732 victims of religious hate crimes in 2008 in America, 66.1 percent were targeted because of anti-Jewish bias and 7.5% were targeted because of anti-Islamic bias.

So, what is really going on?

Just who is Representative Keith Ellison (Democrat, MN-05)?

Is he one of two Muslim Congressmen?

Is he the heel to Rep. Peter King (R-NY), whose Homeland Security hearings  on the radicalization of American Muslims have been smeared as a “witch hunt”?

Is he the Congressman who—in his best Joseph Welch impression—recounted a tale (of which some are questioning the veracity) of Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23-year-old Pakistan-born American who sacrificed his life saving civilians from the 2001 Islamic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center buildings

Or is he a radical himself, with ties to radical Islam himself?

Yes, yes, yes, and unfortunately, yes.

Our story starts in 1963, when Keith Maurice Ellison was born into a God-fearing, all-American Roman Catholic family in Detroit, Michigan. While attending Wayne State University for an economics degree, Ellison converted to Islam at the age of 19. Ellison later enrolled at the University of Minnesota’s law school.

In an interview with Middle East media outlet Al-Jazeera, he explained that his conversion to Islam was political in nature:

I had begun to really look around and ask myself about the social circumstances of the country, issues of justice, issues of change. When I looked at my spiritual life, and I looked at what might inform social change, justice in society… I found Islam.

As a law student, Ellison began to write of his adulation for the “Minister Louis Farrakhan,” and the Nation of Islam. In 1990, Ellison helped arrange racial separatist—and inventor of the anti-Caucasian slur “honkey”—Stokley Carmichael’s speech at Minnesota, on the topic of “Zionism: Imperialism, White Supremacy, or Both?”

Ellison graduated with a Juris Doctorate that same year, going on to work as the executive director of the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis, which specialized in the pro bono defense of “low-income people and people of color.” After that, he took a job with the law firm Hassan & Reed Ltd.

For eight years, Ellison also “forgot” to pay his federal taxes, prompting the IRS to place liens against his house. He also ignored so many parking and speeding tickets issued to him that his driver’s license was suspended, multiple times.

In 1992, Ellison defended Sharif Willis—a previously convicted murderer—charged with helping a group of gangsters calling themselves the “Vice Lords” to kill a local cop named Jerry Haaf. What was Ellison’s argument for Wilis’s innocence? Ellison organized public protests against the Minneapolis police, claiming that the police department was waging “a campaign of slander,” in order to scare white people into having the city hire more police officers.

One year later, Ellison protested outside Willis’ trial, screaming, “we don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace.”

Ellison may have gotten away with his butchering of the English language’s grammatical rules, but his client Willis did not get away with murder. He was sent to federal prison for 20 years, on several counts of gun- and drug-related charges.

Other cop-killers that Ellison has promoted and defended over the years include Mumia Abu Jamal and Assata Shakur.

Having failed to free Sharif Willis from the clutches of the white man’s “campaign of slander,” Ellison became involved with the Nation of Islam, promoting Louis Farrakhan’s “Million Man March” and appearing on stage for the “thundering, racist diatribe” stylings of Khalid Abdul Muhammad.

Ellison campaigned on behalf of Malcom X’s daughter, arguing publicly that Qubilah Shabazz was innocent of murder, and that the FBI was trying to kill Farrakhan.

Two years later, Ellison added the surname “Muhammed” to his repertoire, serving as a local Nation of Islam spokesman. During a brief controversy regarding Minnesota Initiative Against Racism official Joanne Jackson’s comment that “Jews are among the most racist white people [she] knew,” Ellison declared that “we stand by the truth contained in the remarks attributed to [Ms. Jackson], and by her right to express her views without sanction.”

Over the years, Ellison has held or appeared at fundraisers and speaking engagements for multiple organizations associated with Islamic extremists, including the Council for American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim American Society, the Islamic Circle of America, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and so on.

Just as a sampler, it should be noted that the founders of CAIR, Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad, were former officers in the Islamic Association of Palestine, a group linked directly to terrorist group Hamas. Awad is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee; in 1998, Ahmad told a group of California Muslims that:

“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

The Islamic Society of North America has been described as the “one of the chief conduits through which the radical Saudi form of Islam passes into the United States,” “[giving] Islamic militants a platform to incite violence and promote hatred.”

I could go on and on about Keith Ellison’s ties to radical Islam, as his entire history has been one sordid love affair with the hatred and strife that his ideology offers.

Ellison’s crocodile tears over the “young lad” Hamdani belie his true allegiances.

However, whereas Welch was a tool of the Soviet nation, Crybaby Keith Ellison is a tool of the Nation of Islam. One wonders if, like Welch did after turning on the waterworks for the cameras, Ellison rounded a corner to cheerily ask a friend, “well, how did it go?”

Protests against Rep. Peter King's hearings on homegrown Jihadists.

Al Sharpton is continuing his lifelong campaign to discredit the civil rights movement. On “Fox & Friends” this morning Sharpton attacked the planned congressional hearings into Muslim extremism and the lack of cooperation by Muslim organizations in combatting the terrorist threat. This lack of cooperation is not innocent. The leading organizations of the Muslim community in America — CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Students Association and the Muslim American Society — are all fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood. Sharpton attacked the hearings, which are being chaired by New York Republican Peter King, as a “witch-hunt” against Muslims. This is the propaganda line of the Muslim Brotherhood and its cohorts: There are no Muslim terrorists and any attempt to identify them as such is “Islamophobia.” Sharpton — himself a racist and inciter of ethnic violence — is a national disgrace. The fact that he is still considered an important spokesman for the civil rights movement and treated with respect even on Fox is an indication of how far and wide the moral corruption of our public culture has spread. Praise is in order for Peter King who has shown enormous political courage in pursuing hearings that are designed to protect Americans from the next terrorist attack.

In Israel, two wings of the progressive movement are set to clash, and hopefully take each other out in a blaze of stupid, while the rest of us point and laugh… the environmentalist movement and the jihad movement are about to go to war. Or, if they had any shreds of intellectual honesty, they would.

And, oh, is it funny to watch.

Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the northern branch of the so-called “Islamic Movement in Israel,” was recently arrested by Israeli authorities, in connection with an arson attack in southern Israel.

According to Israeli news network Arutz Sheva, Salah allegedly set fire to a forest of eucalyptus trees, to protest a Jewish National Fund project in the area—and to drive out any infidelic koala bears that may have taking part in pilgrimages, apparently.

Protesting a forest restoration project in the Negev region, Salah did his best “Disco Inferno” impression and set fire to the forest, in the name of squatters hoping that the land remains barren and infertile for more, potential Muslim squatters to “return”, at some indefinite time in the future.

Salah was arrested by highway patrolmen, two months after being released from serving a five-month prison sentence for attacking a police officer, and a few weeks after a massive forest fire in the Carmel region of Israel, which killed 44 people. During the Carmel fire, Islamic terrorists went on an arson spree, distracting firefighters from the forest fire.

Now, this puts us in a sticky situation, doesn’t it?

On one hand, we have an Islamist, who we’re told by progressives that we should embrace and have group-hugs with. On the other hand, Islamists are attacking Mother Nature, whom we are told is dying, due to the evil alliance between mankind, Dr. Seuss’s Once-ler, and the Flood from Halo.

Progressive darling Salah—a man working to end the existence of the Israeli state—attacked Earth Goddess Gaia, setting fire to Her forests. Clearly, Salah should be punished for burning down the forests, which belong not to Israel, but to the abstract concept that some progressives call “Nature.”

Environmentalists be upset about the march of jihad across Gaia’s bosom? I mean, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC released “the most toxic polluting cloud ever recorded,” according to progressive birdcage-liner UK Independent.

According to government scientists, “unprecedented levels” of acids, sulphur, particulates, and heavy metals were released into the wild… in other words, when radical Islamists attacked us, they were really attacking Mother Earth.

If there’s one thing you should keep in mind, radical Islam is not only hazardous to your health, now it’s an environmental issue, too.

In case anyone else wants to take up the banner of protecting Mother Earth by stopping Islamic jihad and protecting Israel’s right to exist, here’s an idea for a slogan, provided free of charge: “Save the Trees, Defeat Terrorism.”

According to the Team B II Report by a who’s-who of top, national security experts at The Center for Security Policy, “most Muslim organizations in America are controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood or a derivative group.” Meanwhile, the Obama Administration engages in “willful blindness-induced failures” to address “as great a threat as any enemy the nation has ever confronted.” The Muslim Brotherhood, also known as the Ikhwan, supports armed struggle against non-Muslims and has itself identified the Islamic Movement in America to be a part of the “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated….” This “stealth jihad“, referred to as “civilization jihad“, is based in Islamist hatred for Western civilization, hence their unwillingness to conform to American standards of jurisprudence. It is through the “legal, political, military doctrine known within Islam” as Shariah that these organizations are engaging in a non-violent, “for the moment,” campaign to undermine and destroy America.

Here are the five most prominent organizations named specifically by the Muslim Brotherhood as like-minded groups of “friends” in the mission to re-establish a global Islamic caliphate.

#5 — Muslim Students Association

The first organization created by the Muslim Brotherhood was the Muslim Students Association [MSA].

As the Muslim Brothers “settled” in North America, they did so according to their stated bylaws.  At the University of Illinois in Urbana, the Ikhwan created its first front organization in North America, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) in 1963.  Today, MSA chapters are present on many college campuses across the country, serving as recruiting nodes for the MB and, in some cases for violent jihadist organizations [...]

[...] [O]ut  of  the  MSA came  nearly  every  Muslim  organization in America today.  Initially, as MSA chapters sprang  up on American campuses, they presented Islam in public as an acceptable alternative to other religions, never mentioning its revolutionary aspects.  In recent years, MSA members have  become  ever  more  aggressive  in  their demands for accommodations and  silencing those who oppose them. [Team B II Report]

We have seen the MSA’s Jew-hatred and silencing tactics on full display in their treatment of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at UC-Irvine and support for a second Holocaust at UC-San Diego. Abdurrahman Alamoudi who was arrested in 2003 for terrorist fundraising, is a former President of MSA. Alamoudi, a financier of Al Qaeda, is a compatriot of conservative infiltrator Suhail Khan. You may remember Alamoudi also for his role in starting the Roxbury Mosque. Other former members include Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. government’s most-wanted terrorist; Aafia Siddiqui, arrested for attempting to kill U.S. officers in Afghanistan;  Ali Asad Chandia, arrested for conspiring with the Kashmiri terrorist group Lashkar-i-Taiba; and Wa’el Hamza Julaidan, founder of Al Qaeda.

The Muslim Student Association pledge of allegiance, as stated in the video below, is in sync with the credo of the Muslim Brotherhood. The MSA claims 150 groups in 25 cities in America. Despite these horrifying truths, common ground with the Left in an anti-Israel agenda clearly helps to ensure the extremist MSA’s continued status as a “mainstream” organization in America by many universities giving them safe harbor for years.

Next: ISNA’s Extremist Indoctrination in America’s Mosques…

According to the Team B II Report by a who’s-who of top, national security experts at The Center for Security Policy, “most Muslim organizations in America are controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood or a derivative group.” Meanwhile, the Obama Administration engages in “willful blindness-induced failures” to address “as great a threat as any enemy the nation has ever confronted.” The Muslim Brotherhood, also known as the Ikhwan, supports armed struggle against non-Muslims and has itself identified the Islamic Movement in America to be a part of the “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated….” This “stealth jihad“, referred to as “civilization jihad“, is based in Islamist hatred for Western civilization, hence their unwillingness to conform to American standards of jurisprudence. It is through the “legal, political, military doctrine known within Islam” as Shariah that these organizations are engaging in a non-violent, “for the moment,” campaign to undermine and destroy America.

Here are the five most prominent organizations named specifically by the Muslim Brotherhood as like-minded groups of “friends” in the mission to re-establish a global Islamic caliphate.

#5 — Muslim Students Association

The first organization created by the Muslim Brotherhood was the Muslim Students Association [MSA].

As the Muslim Brothers “settled” in North America, they did so according to their stated bylaws.  At the University of Illinois in Urbana, the Ikhwan created its first front organization in North America, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) in 1963.  Today, MSA chapters are present on many college campuses across the country, serving as recruiting nodes for the MB and, in some cases for violent jihadist organizations [...]

[...] [O]ut  of  the  MSA came  nearly  every  Muslim  organization in America today.  Initially, as MSA chapters sprang  up on American campuses, they presented Islam in public as an acceptable alternative to other religions, never mentioning its revolutionary aspects.  In recent years, MSA members have  become  ever  more  aggressive  in  their demands for accommodations and  silencing those who oppose them. [Team B II Report]

We have seen the MSA’s Jew-hatred and silencing tactics on full display in their treatment of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at UC-Irvine and support for a second Holocaust at UC-San Diego. Abdurrahman Alamoudi who was arrested in 2003 for terrorist fundraising, is a former President of MSA. Alamoudi, a financier of Al Qaeda, is a compatriot of conservative infiltrator Suhail Khan. You may remember Alamoudi also for his role in starting the Roxbury Mosque. Other former members include Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. government’s most-wanted terrorist; Aafia Siddiqui, arrested for attempting to kill U.S. officers in Afghanistan;  Ali Asad Chandia, arrested for conspiring with the Kashmiri terrorist group Lashkar-i-Taiba; and Wa’el Hamza Julaidan, founder of Al Qaeda.

The Muslim Student Association pledge of allegiance, as stated in the video below, is in sync with the credo of the Muslim Brotherhood. The MSA claims 150 groups in 25 cities in America. Despite these horrifying truths, common ground with the Left in an anti-Israel agenda clearly helps to ensure the extremist MSA’s continued status as a “mainstream” organization in America by many universities giving them safe harbor for years.

Next: ISNA’s Extremist Indoctrination in America’s Mosques…

This popular post was first published here on Feb. 11, 2011.

On January 31, in response to a question about the Muslim Brotherhood‘s participation in the political process in Egypt, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that “increase in democratic representation has to include a whole host of important non-secular actors…” He did not indicate whether that should include the Christian community. Since the Coptic Christians in Egypt, who have been experiencing massacre by Islamists, represent close to the same percentage of the population as the Muslim Brotherhood, shouldn’t President Obama seek to be as clear on the need for their involvement as he has been on involvement by the Muslim Brotherhood?

Why are the White House and the leftist media encouraging promotion of Muslim Brotherhood involvement but ignoring the Christian community and other minority religious groups persecuted by Islamists in Egypt?

While it is true that there are some Muslims in Egypt who sympathize with the Coptic Christians, and its also true that Christians are playing a role alongside Muslims in the protests against Mubarak, let us not fool ourselves. Christian involvement is urged on, due in large part to President Mubarak’s inability to provide security for them in Egypt, as they face massacre in the wake of a sharp rise in Islamist militancy; that is ignored by the world ’s top Islamic scholars based (where else?) in Cairo.

On New Year’s Day it became crystal clear that Islamist militancy is a serious problem in Egypt when a Christian church filled with worshippers was bombed in Alexandria. Twenty-one Christians were killed. The pro-government media warned that the attack was part of a plot to incite civil war.

Protests by Christians and clashes with the police that erupted after Saturday’s attack could worsen and plunge Egypt into a new spiral of sectarian violence, the government and independent newspapers said. The papers also urged the government to give serious consideration to the plight of the Copts who account for up to 10 percent of Egypt’s 80-million population and often complain of discrimination. “Someone wants to make this country explode… We must realize that there is a plot aimed at triggering religious civil war,” the pro-government daily Rose al-Yussef said. Egyptians should foil attempts by “terrorists” to strike at the country, it said.

Next: Why Islamist Burn the Pope in Effigy Instead of President Obama

On January 31, in response to a question about the Muslim Brotherhood‘s participation in the political process in Egypt, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that “increase in democratic representation has to include a whole host of important non-secular actors…” He did not indicate whether that should include the Christian community. Since the Coptic Christians in Egypt, who have been experiencing massacre by Islamists, represent close to the same percentage of the population as the Muslim Brotherhood, shouldn’t President Obama seek to be as clear on the need for their involvement as he has been on involvement by the Muslim Brotherhood?

Why are the White House and the leftist media encouraging promotion of Muslim Brotherhood involvement but ignoring the Christian community and other minority religious groups persecuted by Islamists in Egypt?

While it is true that there are some Muslims in Egypt who sympathize with the Coptic Christians, and its also true that Christians are playing a role alongside Muslims in the protests against Mubarak, let us not fool ourselves. Christian involvement is urged on, due in large part to President Mubarak’s inability to provide security for them in Egypt, as they face massacre in the wake of a sharp rise in Islamist militancy; that is ignored by the world ’s top Islamic scholars based (where else?) in Cairo.

On New Year’s Day it became crystal clear that Islamist militancy is a serious problem in Egypt when a Christian church filled with worshippers was bombed in Alexandria. Twenty-one Christians were killed. The pro-government media warned that the attack was part of a plot to incite civil war.

Protests by Christians and clashes with the police that erupted after Saturday’s attack could worsen and plunge Egypt into a new spiral of sectarian violence, the government and independent newspapers said. The papers also urged the government to give serious consideration to the plight of the Copts who account for up to 10 percent of Egypt’s 80-million population and often complain of discrimination. “Someone wants to make this country explode… We must realize that there is a plot aimed at triggering religious civil war,” the pro-government daily Rose al-Yussef said. Egyptians should foil attempts by “terrorists” to strike at the country, it said.

Next: Why Islamist Burn the Pope in Effigy Instead of President Obama

Harassing harmless American citizens in the name of national security is one thing; harshly treating terrorists is another story. For obvious reasons, we tend to be far less sympathetic to the interests of the people trying to murder us, but even with moral qualms out of the way, handling captured terrorists presents complications of a more practical nature, as well.

Ahmed Ghailani, the first Guantanamo Bay prisoner tried in a civilian court, was charged with 285 counts but convicted of only one. Why? Because the others rested upon evidence gathered through enhanced interrogation, and was therefore ruled inadmissible.

At the Daily Beast, Karen Greenberg not only defends the exclusion of the tainted evidence, but argues that it probably wouldn’t have changed the jury’s mind anyway:

It is a fact that Judge Kaplan made history when he issued his opinion excluding Abebe from the trial. For the first and perhaps only time in the war on terror, torture had consequences.

Only if saving American lives doesn’t count as a “consequence.” Because if it does, this is neither the first nor the only time.

Anyway, the testimony of witness Hussein Abebe, whose admission that he sold dynamite to Ghailani led Ghailani to confess, was thrown out because the authorities only found out about Abebe because of enhanced interrogation techniques, meaning that, as Andy McCarthy says, “Similarly, the jury was not allowed to learn that Ghailani had confessed, and that after the bombing he had become a celebrity in al-Qaeda circles”:

That is, swaddled in the protections of civilian due process, Ghailani was allowed to pose before the jury as a victim of circumstances who had no idea that the terror network was preparing simultaneous massacres at American embassies.

Sounds like a big deal to me, but to Greenberg, it’s no biggie, because the jury probably wouldn’t have found Abebe credible even if he had testified:

The judge, although basing his decision on the constitutionality of excluding evidence obtained through torture, was clearly concerned about Abebe’s credibility overall and about the role which fear of reprisal may have played in Abebe’s willingness to appear in court. At one point in the pre-trial hearing, Judge Kaplan asked the witness whether he remembered testifying that in Tanzania the police sometimes took people without telling their families where they were being held. The witness said that he remembered telling the court this. “He was no volunteer,” the judge wrote in his opinion, “Quite the contrary. He was induced to testify only out of fear of the consequences of not doing so, including possible prosecution and, conceivably, worse.” The testimony itself, according to Judge Kaplan, in his largely redacted opinion on suppressing the witness, was “quite incredible.”

No, Ms. Greenberg, the jury didn’t “decid[e] this case based on the facts.” They didn’t hear about a confession made by Ghailani, not Abebe. Perhaps the decision to throw out Abebe’s testimony squared with the rules and traditions of our civilian justice system, but in my mind, that only raises questions about even our civilian rules of admissibility.

Some folks may remember, back in their misspent youth, waking up with a stranger next to them. A disconcerting experience, to say the least, and certainly a stellar argument against excessive alcohol consumption.

Well, anybody notice who’s lying in bed with us this morning?

The ACLU and many on the Left.

They are concerned about the TSA assault on our civil liberties, and we should welcome their partnership on the issue. That being said, they’re pretty quick to blame us for this situation:

“But conservatives bear a lot of blame for their current predicament. This comprehensive assault on individual freedom didn’t occur in a vacuum; it occurred because conservatives were successful in frightening Americans into choosing security over liberty every time the choice was before them, and because America’s elected officials take being blamed for a terrorist attack more seriously than their oath to protect the Constitution.”

The Leftists may have a small point here. Certainly, arguments against the Patriot Act, for example, included the phrase “slippery slope.”

However, the Leftists fail to make a key distinction. Can you spot it here (from the Leftist American Prospect)?

“As the holidays approach, conservatives livid over the new procedures might take a moment during the humiliating inconvenience of a virtual strip search or TSA grope session to think about what indefinite detention in an island prison or a week of forced sleep deprivation feels like. The peril of provoking mass panic every time an incompetent terrorist lights himself on fire might become more apparent.”

This quote shows how the Left misses the point entirely, but first a quick rebuttal to their deluded impression that fear of the terrorist threat is something that has been “ramped up” by conservatives for political gain. “Peril of provoking mass panic,” indeed. It doesn’t take but 30 seconds of Googling to find out what Islam would like to do to the West. And then there’s the solid and tragic evidence in front of us (aka what has already happened):

So this idea that conservatives are just trying to scare us all, and that if we ignore the Islamists they’ll stop their temper tantrum, is patently ridiculous.